Murder, Son’s Death Sentence Kill Family Dreams

CLEARWATER, Fla. — As she contemplates her son spending this Mother’s Day on death row, Dorothy Carpenter thinks back on a happier family holiday before their lives were turned upside down.

It was a perfect Thanksgiving Day in Florida, hot and bright, and the Carpenter family set up seven grills to barbecue turkeys for dozens of friends and relatives.

Dorothy and her husband, Chuck, had just put a hefty down payment on the property--20 acres of land on a lake, surrounded by orange groves in a secluded corner of southwest Florida.

The retired Air Force technician and his wife, a home nurse, were building an assisted-living home for the elderly. They had financial backers, a state license and the architect’s plans in hand.

It was a proud and promising time. Aaron, their youngest, was married and hoped to join the police force. Daughter Corina had come through a rough divorce and she and 5-year-old Elena were doing well. Even their oldest, troubled David, was living on his own--keeping a neat apartment and finding decent work.

At 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, David was a strong man with an imposing figure, but his family thought of him more as a shy adolescent. Mentally impaired since suffering a high fever as a toddler, David struggled with behavioral problems much of his life.

He couldn’t get along with anyone his own age, and he lost jobs as quickly as he found them. Even his father was forced to fire David from his landscaping and handyman business.

“He just is not a sociable, likable type person,” his mother explained. “Unless you love him.”

But to those who love him, David was a gentle hero, anxious to rush to the rescue. He decorated his apartment with “Star Trek” figures and hung toy airplanes from the trees. With children and the elderly, he was tender and playful.

On Thanksgiving Day 1994, David asked his mother if he could bring a friend to their family celebration--a woman he befriended at a coin laundry. He teased that, at 63, Ann Powell was older than his mom.

“I was just delighted he had made a friend,” Dorothy Carpenter recalls.

She didn’t notice, until days later, that Powell never made it to their home. David played quietly with the young children. She wishes now she had found some time to talk with her son during that busy holiday.

Ann Powell was a regular at Florida’s line-dance clubs and seniors’ singles bars. Divorced in the mid-1970s, she was estranged from her two children.

She had moved to Florida from New Jersey in the summer of 1993 to care for an invalid aunt in exchange for a place to live. She had to move out when her aunt was placed in a nursing home.

By 1994, Powell was lonely and depressed, short on friends and cash. The money from selling her New Jersey home was running low. That spring, police found her unconscious in the back seat of her car, her head on a pillow among bottles of prescription drugs. She survived.

The next time police found her was Thanksgiving Day, her nude body stuffed into the trunk of her burned-out car. Her bra was tied tightly through her mouth and around her neck, her hands and feet hogtied.

No one knew her well enough to realize she had been missing.

A few days after Thanksgiving, Corina Morris came home from work with Elena to find her brother waiting frantically on their doorstep.

Powell’s murder was the big news on TV. David said he had done some work on the woman’s car. His fingerprints might be there. Detectives might be looking for him.

“Call the police,” his sister advised.

That was the last night she saw her brother without shackles.

David Carpenter told police he invited Powell over for dinner and dancing. He made pasta. He said they had consensual sex. Then, he said, his 17-year-old neighbor, Neilan “Neil” Pailing, came over and also had sex with Powell.

Carpenter went to the bathroom. While he was gone, he said, Powell made fun of Pailing’s sexual ability, and the teen beat her with a toy gun lying nearby and then strangled her.

Carpenter said he helped clean up. He tied up the body. He moved her files from her car trunk to a storage shed behind his apartment. He lifted her body into the trunk. He spray-painted over her blood on his floor.

In February 1996, David Carpenter, now 35, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair.

Pailing pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and got 25 years in prison.

Pailing and Carpenter both blamed each other for the actual murder. But Pailing was only 17 and the police, prosecutors and the judge all said that was the key.

The Carpenter family is angry that David’s mental ability didn’t matter in the eyes of the law.

They’re also indignant at Circuit Judge Timothy Peters, who specialized in condominium law until appointed to the bench just months before the trial. David Carpenter’s was his first murder case.

Carpenter had to be sentenced twice because Peters gave faulty instructions to the jury the first time, wrongly saying Carpenter could be out of prison in 25 years if he wasn’t sentenced to death. That forced a second sentencing hearing last February. The sentence was the same, but another procedural error forced Peters to repeat it in March.

Why the disparity in the sentences of the two men?

“The defendant dominated the relationship with the 17-year-old Neilan Pailing,” Peters said in his sentencing order. “The defendant was older, heavier and stronger.”

“Yes, my son David is a strong, big person,” his mother says. “But inside, he is maybe 16 years old.”

Once David’s arrest hit the news, the Carpenters’ financial backers pulled out of the nursing home project.

Dorothy Carpenter was fired from her job. Her company feared patients wouldn’t want a murderer’s mother coming into their homes.

Aaron Carpenter learned he might have to give up on becoming a police officer because the law forbids officers from associating with felons, such as his brother.

Teens threw rocks at Corina’s windows, threatening her and Elena, who was told only that Uncle David did something bad. She spent her savings trying to help her parents.

Chuck Carpenter lost clients. He eventually gave up his landscaping business, along with his hopes of living among the orange groves. He and his wife lost their down payment. They moved out of the Tampa area to a friend’s home near Orlando.

“But if I’m bitter at all, it’s not against other people. Maybe I’m bitter against David for letting this happen,” he said.

“But I don’t want to be bitter against David. So I’m just bitter against myself--could I have done something differently?”

Chuck Carpenter gave up his Air Force career in 1976 to stay home with David, then an angry and abrasive teenager.

His son’s difficulties started in 1965, when Chuck and his wife lived in Germany. David, then 3, had hazel eyes and the build of a tiny wrestler. He was bright and active.

Until the measles. His temperature shot up to 105 degrees. His mother couldn’t get to the base for help. She couldn’t speak German. She used baby aspirin and ice cubes--but it took three hours to bring the fever down.

When he recovered, David couldn’t walk. He couldn’t talk.

An IQ test showed he was borderline retarded. Over the years, doctors suggested putting David in a group home, saying he wouldn’t be able to function in society.

Instead, his mother worked to keep him living at home, attending a regular school, leading as normal a life as she could create for him.

“I always felt love could conquer all,” she said.

Clearwater police Detective Jim Steffens understands the Carpenter family’s frustration. But he also understands Powell’s murder. He keeps her photo on an investigation binder. She’s wearing a blue floral blouse and a sad smile.

“All she was was a lonely lady looking for a date and a dinner. And she ended up in the trunk of her car,” he says.

“I think what the Carpenters need to resolve this thing is for their son to look them in the eye and tell them what happened that night.”

Maybe. But more likely, that could never be enough.

David’s family pretty much believes what he told police--Pailing committed the murder but David was there, he didn’t stop it and he cleaned up the mess. That doesn’t comfort them.

“David has always told me he didn’t do anything. I’ve always said, ‘Why didn’t you stop it?’ ” his father said.

“That was always my thing. David finally had his chance to be a hero. And he blew it.”